Sanctum Becomes Leading Protocol on Solana, But Revenues Plummet by 39.7%

For the first time since Jupiter Exchange has dominated the rankings of protocols on Solana, something has shifted: Sanctum has become the leading protocol on Solana in terms of locked capital, surpassing the decentralized exchange aggregator that has represented the heart of decentralized finance on the network for years. This change in leadership is not just a statistical detail: it reflects a shift of capital from trading to liquid staking, with investors increasingly leaning towards tools that generate yield rather than mere exchange intermediation.

Key Points

• Sanctum surpasses Jupiter Exchange as the leading protocol on Solana by TVL
  • Major TVL milestones and market share growth
  • Comparison of Sanctum's TVL with Jupiter Exchange
• Sanctum's innovation: Infinity Pool and liquid staking ecosystem
  • Shared liquidity mechanism among liquid staking tokens
  • Size of liquid staking tokens created
• Growth challenges: revenue decline despite TVL increase
• New products and user adoption
• The rise of liquid staking signals a change in Solana's DeFi landscape
• FAQ
  • What does Sanctum's rise mean for the Solana ecosystem?
  • How does Sanctum's Infinity Pool work?
  • Have Sanctum's revenues grown alongside TVL?
  • What has been the outcome in terms of users for Sanctum's new mobile app?

Key Points

• Sanctum has surpassed Jupiter Exchange to become the protocol with the highest TVL on Solana.
• Sanctum's TVL reached approximately $1.66 billion by the end of August 2026.
• By the end of Q2 2026, the TVL was 16.64 million SOL, equivalent to about $1.28 billion, compared to Jupiter Exchange's $1.34 billion in June 2026.
• Sanctum now controls about 2.72% of all SOL in circulation, up from 2.02% a year ago.
• Despite the growth in TVL, the protocol's revenues fell by 39.7% in Q2, to $880,000.

Sanctum Surpasses Jupiter Exchange as the Leading Protocol on Solana by TVL

Sanctum, an infrastructure dedicated to liquid staking, has dethroned Jupiter Exchange from the top of the rankings of Solana protocols ordered by total locked value. This is not a trivial overtaking: Jupiter has built a central role over the years as a liquidity aggregator for trading, while now it is a protocol designed to make otherwise idle capital work to claim the top position.

Major TVL Milestones and Market Share Growth

By the end of Q2 2026, Sanctum reached an all-time high of 16.64 million SOL in protocol TVL, an increase of 7.77% from the 15.44 million SOL of the previous quarter. At current SOL prices, that figure corresponds to approximately $1.28 billion. From there, growth did not stop: by the end of August, Sanctum's LST Validators rose to about $1.66 billion. Concurrently, the market share of the network's native token has also grown: Sanctum now controls about 2.72% of all SOL in circulation, compared to the 2.02% recorded just a year earlier.

Comparison of Sanctum's TVL with Jupiter Exchange

The direct comparison clarifies the extent of the overtaking. Jupiter Exchange, in June 2026, held a TVL of approximately $1.34 billion. Sanctum surpassed it first gradually, with $1.28 billion at the end of Q2, then sharply, reaching $1.66 billion by the end of August. This gap opened in just a few weeks, indicating that the flow of capital towards liquid staking on Solana is not a slow and gradual phenomenon, but a true acceleration.

Sanctum's Innovation: Infinity Pool and Liquid Staking Ecosystem

At the core of Sanctum's growth is a precise technical choice: unifying the liquidity of different tokens instead of leaving them isolated. It is this architecture, more than just the increase in capital, that explains why the protocol has managed to scale so quickly.

Shared Liquidity Mechanism Among Liquid Staking Tokens

The heart of the product is the Infinity Pool, a mechanism that provides shared liquidity to a very broad range of liquid staking tokens. In traditional models, each LST operates in an isolated pool with limited trading depth; Sanctum's architecture allows these tokens to share the same liquidity, reducing fragmentation and making the exchange between different versions of staked SOL more efficient.

The Size of Created Liquid Staking Tokens

Sanctum has made it possible to create a number of LSTs ranging from 200 to over 1,000, created on behalf of various partners in the Solana network. It is a wide range, but it still indicates how the protocol has become a reference infrastructure for those wanting to launch their own liquid staking token without having to build the liquidity mechanisms from scratch.

Growth Challenges: Revenue Decline Despite TVL Increase

The growth of locked capital has not automatically translated into higher revenues for the protocol. In the second quarter of 2026, Sanctum generated $880,000 in revenue, a decrease of 39.7% compared to the previous period. This figure contrasts with the expansion of TVL and deserves attention: a protocol can accumulate more and more capital while simultaneously seeing the margin it can extract from that capital shrink if fees or monetization mechanisms do not scale at the same pace as the liquidity managed.

New Products and User Adoption

On the product front, Sanctum launched a mobile app in July 2026 that attracted over 9,000 users in the first days after its debut. This is a sign of genuine interest in liquid staking even outside the circle of more experienced DeFi users, who have so far mainly operated from desktop interfaces or directly on the blockchain.

The Rise of Liquid Staking Signals a Shift in Solana's DeFi Landscape

In previous cycles, decentralized exchange aggregators like Jupiter occupied the center of the value chain because trading represented the primary use of DeFi on Solana. Jupiter built a huge competitive advantage around that function and remains one of the most important pillars of the network's DeFi stack today.

Liquid staking, however, intercepts capital that would otherwise remain idle in native staking or simply parked in wallets, offering the opportunity to earn staking rewards while still maintaining available liquidity. In the broader crypto landscape, liquid staking has been one of the fastest-growing DeFi categories: Ethereum's liquid staking ecosystem exploded after the Shapella upgrade, which enabled withdrawals, and a similar dynamic appears to be repeating itself on Solana with Sanctum at the center of the phenomenon.

The fact that this overtaking occurs just as Sanctum is experiencing a decline in revenue raises a question that the market will need to follow in the coming quarters: if the growth of TVL continues to not translate into proportional revenues, the protocol will likely need to revisit its monetization model, even at the cost of slowing the expansion that has just brought it to the top of the Solana rankings.

FAQ

What does Sanctum's rise mean for the Solana ecosystem?

Sanctum's overtaking of Jupiter Exchange in terms of TVL shows a significant shift of capital, moving from decentralized exchange aggregation towards liquid staking products on Solana.

How does Sanctum's Infinity Pool work?

The Infinity Pool allows shared liquidity among multiple liquid staking tokens, pooling liquidity together instead of isolating each token in separate pools.

Have Sanctum's revenues grown alongside TVL?

No: despite the increase in locked capital, Sanctum's revenues fell by 39.7% in the second quarter of 2026, stopping at $880,000.

What has been the outcome in terms of users for Sanctum's new mobile app?

Sanctum's mobile app, launched in July 2026, attracted over 9,000 users in the days immediately following its launch.

Content created with the assistance of artificial intelligence and human editorial review.